Walter Whall Battiss (South African 1906 - 1982) SNOW IN THE...

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Estimate

R120,000 - R180,000

Hammer

R120,000

Fees

Walter Whall Battiss (South African 1906 - 1982) SNOW IN THE FREE STATE

More Information

signed; signed, titled, dated June 1959, and inscribed with a message from the artist on the reverse
oil on wood panel
20,5 by 30,5cm

PROVENANCE
Gifted by the artist

For our June 2021 Auction we are delighted to offer a Walter Battiss painting that has never come to market. This delightful work was gifted to a fourth year student at Pretoria Boys High School in 1959 for looking after Battiss’ class. The inscription on the back of the frame reads:

“To my friend Mr Nel
In appreciation of his help at the boys high school.
Walter Battiss
June 1959”

Battiss spent much of the 1960’s travelling to East Africa, Southern Arabia and Greece, in what turned out to be an incredibly prolific creative period. It was at this time Battiss worked as an art teacher at Pretoria Boys High School.

We can assume that Battiss was travelling locally when he produced Snow in the Free State, which explains his absence from his class and his need to ask the fourth year student for assistance.

Interestingly, though dated 1959, before many of his travels to East Africa and beyond, the work presages many of the characteristics of the paintings he produced in the 1960s. The cerulean blue that appeared liberally in Battiss’ paintings from this period appears throughout this canvas. His use of a palette knife as a tool would have been a recent discovery for him in 1959. A few confident swipes of the knife is all he required to spread snow onto the foreground.

Battiss’ use of dark blue lines to define stacks of rocks out of flat planes of colour is a forerunner to the artist’s use of sgraffitto (scratching marks into wet paint) which would feature greatly in the work he produced in the 1960s. While his use of sgraffito was burgeoning before his travels, inspired by graffiti and African petroglyphs, it was a few years later, during his visit to the Hadramaut is southern Arabia, while documenting ancient rock engravings, that the technique was truly impressed upon the artist.

This painting is a transitional work bearing indicators of a style of work that the artist would adopt during his time travelling in the 1960s. It is also rare to find a painting that has never been displayed outside of the private collection, passed down by descent from the pupil who received it as a gift for looking after Battiss’ class in his absence.
S.D

Siebrits, W. Walter Battiss: “I Invented Myself”’, In ‘The Five Lives of Walter Battiss’, edited by Warren Siebrits. Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation.

Closed
Auction Date: 8th Jun 2021 at 10am

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